Issue: April 2007
Robert Pho
Skin Design Tattoo
Las Vegas, Nevada
Robert Pho was born in Cambodia, but is full-blooded Chinese. He came to the States in 1971, and has been tattooing since late 1989. He started inking prison-style tattoos with a guitar string and a Walkman motor. “Basically, I was inspired by prison art. I was in prison for seven years, from ’89 to 95, 1 became kind of big in there, you know. What inspired me was that you can take art and put it on the skin. It was simply amazing to me. I got pretty good, because I did all my practice work on me first. Everything you see on my front I did myself. Every single thing: both arms, left-handed, right-handed, my legs. I had plenty of practice, when I first started. The only kind of instruction I ever received was dip it and do it.” Besides his own self-rendered work, the first professional tattoo Pho got was from Jack Rudy, on the back of his neck. Robert also has two striking tattoos on his throat, one by Tom Renshaw and the other by Bob Tyrrell. “When I got tattooed by these guys I felt good that I was doing things the right way. My technique was solid and I took about the same amount of time they did. When Tom and Bob looked at my work they were really kind of amazed by it. It was real- ly an honor to be tattooed by guys like that, because I’ve been looking up, especially to Tom, forever. When I was in prison I used to read about him.”